Google Removed Feature from Speakers Due To Copyright Infringement

It is not hidden that Google and Sonos are involved in a legal battle over some patent infringement. Now, the former is taking steps to avoid further conflict and thereby making sure that it doesn’t have to pay fines or royalties. For that purpose, Google has downgraded some of its smart speaker features, which the company has supposedly copied. After two years of scrutiny, the US International Trade Commission ruled out that Google has copied Sonos features into its smart speakers.

Moreover, the court released a cease-and-desist order against Google. In addition to that, Sonos was asking the court to put a ban on several of Google products, including Google Home, Nest audio hardware, Pixel devise, and more. As of now, Google is waiting for a presidential review of the situation. Once the review is done, we will get to know if the ban will take effect or not. Anyways, Google has now found a workaround to avoid paying fines to Sonos; it has removed those features that Sonos alleged were copied.

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Google in an official blog post announced that it is discontinuing features like changing the volume of a Speakers Group. The features allow users to sync audio with multiple Home and Nest smart speakers. Up till this moment, users could control the volume of the entire setup at once. However, after the court ruling, Google has decided to remove the all-in-one volume control. In other words, the users have to adjust the volume of each speaker separately.

How potent is Google’s solution?

So far, users could have controlled the volume level with a single slider or via voice commands. However, Google has now removed the ability to now control the volume with the phone’s volume rocker. Both the aforesaid features were believed to be copied from Sonos patents. Anyways, users seem quite disappointed with the new development. They have taken it to the blog post to make it clear.

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